I’ve been having them put my progressive section of my glasses a bit lower, and I noticed that they are now like a bi-focal where I have to raise my head a bit when looking at things that are almost dead ahead of me but close... which reminds me of grandpa.

How many of you guys still get bifocals vs. getting a progressive lenses with no line and is there any benefit or con with bifocals in your opinion.

In the tradition of the 'fire, this doesn't deal with the question, but I was just in for my yearly exam and explained that there was no way that I was getting bifocals. I take my glasses off to read and am very happy with that. Dr. Muller was very understanding and said that if I ever change my mind, just let him know. Also said that I have just the slightest hint of paw prints, but that they need not concern us at this time.

I hope I never have to settle for the ed mcmahon look

All progressive lenses have an "hourglass" shape that takes you from your distance to your near. That hourglass can be manipulated but not eliminated. When you free up the top for more distance vision, the "waist" of the hourglass will become more pronounced and your zone for intermediate sight (think arm's length/computer screen) will become very narrow. In a newspaper you might only have 1 column that's clear/sharp.

A lined bifocal will work until it doesn't. You'll have distance vision and near/reading vision but you won't have any "help" in your intermediate zone. A lined bifocal can be difficult for people who use/need a lot of intermediate vision, like those on computers all day, every day. A lined bifocal in a set of sunglasses for fishing/hunting when you only need the help tying knots or reading a case-head to ensure you're chambering the proper ammo is a popular option.

"Manipulating the hourglass" to best meet your needs is one of the best reasons to buy your glasses from your eye Dr's office, assuming that they have experienced opticians that understand your needs and can match it up to the lens options and technology available to them from their lab/lens vendor.

I love my progressives. My vision is seamless. It’s almost like not wearing glasses. I get the verilux lenses, to me, they are worth the money.

Added
What horse1 said...especially having your glasses come from your eye Dr . I tried taking my script to lens crafters and had bad results. I just could not get a clear picture at any distance and was blurry around the edges. When I received my glasses from my dr they were clear at all distances instantly .

I struggled with adjusting to bifocals for several years before spending the $$$ on progressives. Progressives have been great.

That intermediate vision is helpful for most if us. Driving nails, reading dials on lathes and mills, anything at arms length.
Way back when before the progressives Dad as a carpenter got trifocals.

I much prefer lined lenses myself. Tried progressive lenses once but could never adjust to them.

I like being able to shift just my eyes to see things not directly in front of me instead turning my whole head like with progressive lenses.

I also like lined bi and trifocals lenses because they immediately define each field of vision.


As always, YMMV...

I recently got new progressives and had a devil of a time getting them adjusted right. One eye was out of focus, couldn't walk in the woods, then when they were adjusted so I could see the little doohickies were digging into my nose and gave me headaches. I got tired of going in for adjustments so I just bent them until they quit pissing me off and I didn't trip over everything.

My conclusion- glasses suck.

I'm far sighted, lots of cheap readers about. I wear bifocal sunglasses.

I have progessives and love them after getting used to the effect .

That's what I used to do, and pay through the nose for their top of line lenses.

Now, after $6200 cataract surgery and IOL's installed, I'm near 20/20 with no glasses.

I hate wearing glasses.
Astigmatism that can not be corrected surgically means progressives. Forever.

I could never like the progressives. Was always tilting my head up and down trying to find the focus. In spite of everyone telling me I would like them better than lined bi-focal I didn't .

I wear progressives for everyday use - they suck when looking thru a scope.

I need a high AR15 type scope height so I can look thru the exact center of the lens so that everything is clear.

I did get new single vision lenses for my Zeiss shooting glasses and they’re the cats azz.

You will.

Am near sighted and wear contacts. Thankfully no astigmatism. Hit 45 last year and needed some help for up close wire work and tying on lures. Hate glasses. Eye dr gave me a multi-focal contact for my non-dominant eye in my case my left eye. Calls it modified mono-vision or something. Took about a week to get used to. Now when I look up close, the left eye kinda takes over and i can see to tie a knot. Its not perfect but a lot better than before.

I started with lined bifocals in my early 40's and after a while tried progressives which worked okay for me at the time. Now in my late 50's, I need trifocals and progressives give me enough distortion around the edges to really mess up my peripheral vision. I've toyed with the idea of trying progressives again, but I'm so used to the lined trifocals I'm not sure I'd be able to adjust.

It took me a couple weeks to get used to progressives after having bifocals for a couple years but I really prefer them now. They are just as seamless as can be for me that I sometimes forget I'm wearing glasses. There are two situations that I have realized I can't deal with the glasses. I can't look through my binos with the glasses on. Just can't get a good picture and can't get comfortable, so I take them off when ever I need to glass...the other thing is I didn't notice until a couple years ago that my glasses distort what I'm looking at enough that I can't tell level ground from not level ground. An example is when we are choosing a site to set up the tent when hunting. What looks nice and flat to me is often way off and I need someone else to pick the spot to pitch the tent often.

Another question comes to mind here. I got the self darkening lenses this time around and I like them a lot, but there are sometimes drawbacks to having them. They distort the natural colors I'm seeing without me noticing it at times when the light is bright because they get so dark at those times. And it sometimes takes a bit for them to lighten up once I go inside from a bright outside area.. how do you guys like the self darkening lenses?

Bob

I won’t use the word “progressive”. My lenses are “multi-focal” and I like them just fine.

And I like my self-darkening lenses, too.

I tried progressives... HATED 'em. After about 30 days I went to normal bifocals and I won't go back.. But I had them move the bifocal up higher than most people - since I wanna read straight ahead, not peering down to see... They questioned it but supplied them to my specs (PUN!)... I know many people can get used to progressive styles but I'm not one of 'em..

Progressives. On my second set, this time have digitally processed lenses, much better that 1st set, larger corrected area/field of view/less head turning to get right focus. Also talked to optician when I ordered them to address some other shortcomings of old lenses, like difficult to get good focus on truck dashboard and motorcycle gauges - they were able to adjust transition area to fix. Have never really had any issues with looking thru scopes with them.

I have never been able to adjust to progressive lenses.I am going back to bifocals.

Interesting.

Have wore glasses for 40 years, near sighted, everything
was fine until about 10 years ago. Started needing to take my glasses off
to read.

Got progressives, worthless.
Company provides safety glasses, that's all I get.
Realized the eyedoc that they have fit us, didn't do it right.
The correction was too low to use.

Next time, the lady was one I knew personally.
She fit me up better.

Still not happy.
But learning about the hourglass and fitment explain some
issues I have.
This pair is at least 5 years old(new ones free every two years, stupid, I know)
I have stepped on them, dropped them and smashed them flat catching them.
Set rolls of paper on them at work. Smashed flat and popped a lens out.

Point is, it's time to get new ones.

Any idea of something to say to try and get better fitment using
office staff I'm not familiar with.

I need close, far, and intermediate.
Work is all about my eyes.
Seeing materials going through machines.
Reading mics, calipers, tape measures, while doing setup work.

I finally started buying sunglasses with progressives as well.

But I do have them put the short distance stuff down lower in the lense so it doesn’t screw with my visions so much.

I like the progressives and the multifocal contacts, neither are perfect for me but will work.

I started with progressives, but had them lower the close in area.

Digitally surfaced lenses are more "adjustable/customizable" for the individual wearer in that an experienced optician can do quite a bit of manipulation of the hourglass. A digital lens will typically offer a wider and flatter clear field of view vs. a conventionally surfaced lens. Occasionally some folks just cannot adapt to the "flatter field of view" similar to the folks who don't like "Swaro-Vision" in Swarovski binocs. Most folks like it significantly better, but, there are always a few who don't. It's not wrong to love a conventionally surfaced lens, nor is someone who feels their vision significantly improved by going to a digital lens wrong either.

Polycarbonate is optically the worst material commonly available. Poly gets pushed a lot because it cheap for the manufacturer to produce, easy for the manufacturer to surface and edge into pretty much any frame, blocks pretty much all UV, and is very impact resistant therefore offers a level of safety not available in standard plastic or glass. Glass in spectacle lenses is dying on the vine. There are just a small handful of places within the US that actually produce glass lenses. They're expensive and typically take 3-5 weeks to get, additionally, the technology for surfacing glass lenses doesn't offer the same level of customization or wide field of view that digitally surfaced different forms of plastic offer. If your optician offers you Poly, ask them about other options that may offer superior optical performance. Not just "thinner" because 1.67 high-index material optically isn't any better than Poly.

Varilux is a brand name, Zeiss is a brand name, there are many other manufacturers as well and each manufacturer produces dozens of different designs. "Lens Designs" are essentially computer programs that tell the surfacing equipment what to do so rarely are designs discontinued, it happens, but it's rare because for the most part there's no inventory cost to keeping a design, it's just digital storage space. Saying you want Varilux or Zeiss is like saying you're going to buy a Chevy. That's fine but are you buying a 1982 Chevette or a 2020 Corvette because in the optical world, both are still available.

The above is really the long way to say, find an office with experienced opticians and take the time to really lay out what you want from your eyewear. Listen to your opticians suggestions regarding frames that fit or don't fit you. A frame that fits you will will allow the manufacturer to keep the center of your finished lenses close to the center of the lens blank they start with, this all leads to better optical performance. Don't assume that the optician is just trying to upgrade you to get more of your $$ for no benefit to you. Most offices have a mind-numbing number of alternatives. They'll also typically have 2-4 "go-to" options. Often the "go-to" that an office uses is going to be your best bet because that office knows how to manipulate their "go-to" lens to most likely get it right the 1st time, or, make the proper adjustment in the event that the lens doesn't work for you and needs to be re-made.

First off, safety glasses are almost always poly lenses due to impact resistance so you're starting in an optical hole.

2nd, engineers and to a lessor extent machinists as a group never quite seem to "get" that the hourglass and therefore some optical compromise is going to be there and there's nothing within the current physical universe that's going to allow for multiple progressing powers to be contained within 1 surface without the hourglass. You will never go back to the full-field of view that you experienced for 40yrs through single-vision lenses.

The free lenses provided by your employer are typically a budget conscious offering with little to no customization available. If you're truly looking for "better", you might just have to go to an office you trust and buy your own.

I went the progressive route when I got my first pair. They took quite a bit of adjustment.

I'm giving away the punchline, but I got the glasses and after a month or so I started noticing that every time I went to a large store, I was having to walk out with nausea and dizziness. Once I had to drop the cart in the back of a Kroger store and just hurry to the exit. I was thinking that somehow I had acquired agoraphobia, because just driving up to the local Sam's Club or Kroger was making me feel nauseated and panicky in the car.

After 6 months of this, I was close to going to a headshrink, but luckily the guys on here told me it might be the new bi-focals. Sure enough, it was. My eyes were flitting about trying to focus near and far on things and it was getting my vestibular system all whacked out. The fix? I started wearing a ball cap inside the stores and that limited my view so that my eyes could no longer focus on the ceiling. It worked like a charm. It's been over 10 years, and I still wear a hat in stores and malls.

Outside of that, the progressives work fine for me.

In my experience progressives allow the user to see better in between the reading and distance correction. I can use my computer with my progressive lens and my eye finds the sweet spot for the intermediate distance. I also bought my lens at Costco and had them lower the reading prescription a tad so with these glasses I can recline and watch television. Something about how they are ground I see much better with them then other glasses with the same prescription.

I tried progressives, but found that the sweet spot for reading and close work was too narrow, like only a couple of characters at a time. I now wear tri-focals, with distance, intermediate and reading. I have a special pair of glasses for computer work that have just the reading and a large area of intermediate. I've recently found that neither distance or intermediate was quite right for TV. I was lucky that I found an old pair of my computer glasses that worked perfectly for 12 feet away, and I leave them by the TV.

Getting old ain't easy, but it beats the alternative.

I went with progressives for my regular glasses and sunglasses. It was seamless for me. No lengthy adjustment time and they just seem so normal. I don't have to move my head up and down like a bobblehead to find my sweet spot. This year I purchased some shooting glasses and they were not offered in progressive lenses. So, I got bi-focals so I can see the scoring sheets. I just could not get used to them at all. Walking felt odd and I was always trying to find the intermediate focus that was not there. So, I just went with single vision lenses. I can't read much with them but at least I'm not dizzy trying to walk in them.